it will be found in a thousand different ways and on the most undoubted authority that the male history of this period is only the superficial view, and that side by side with these sovereigns, who were either worthless or dissolute, there reigned some of the most accomplished and distinguished of women.
In the foremost rank we must place Julia Domna, the wife of Septimius Severus, the daughter of a priest of the sun at Emesa, in Cœlesyria. Her husband had chosen her for a wife, even before his own accession to the throne, in consequence of an oracle which attributed to her a royal nativity. Julia Domna was beautiful enough to make the prediction easy of fulfilment in some way or other, and it may fairly be presumed that her beauty and sound sense, added to a lively imagination, contributed with the promising oracle to make a deep impression on the heart of the austere general. As soon as she had been made empress she gathered round her the finest intellects and greatest orators of the day; amongst them were Dion Cassius, the historian, the emi-
